personage, wrote to remonstrate with us thereon; observing, that though heaven was a very good translation for a bishop, yet that, in such cases, he preferred 'the original to the translation.' As we murder bishops, so is there another class of persons whom we only afflict with letiferous diseases. This latter tribe consists of his Majesty and his Majesty's ministers. Whenever we cannot abuse their measures, we always fall foul on their health. Does the King pass any popular law,—we immediately insinuate that his constitution is on its last legs. Does the minister act like a man of sense,—we instantly observe, with great regret, that his complexion is remarkably pale. There is one manifest advantage in diseasing people, instead of absolutely destroying them. The public may flatly contradict us in one case, but it never can in the other:—it is easy to prove that a man is alive; but utterly impossible to prove that he is in health. What if some opposing newspaper take up the cudgels in his behalf, and assert that the victim of all Pandora's complaints, whom we send tottering to the grave, passes one-half the
